High Yield Emergency Savings - Make it happen, and keep it happening

Let’s get real here for a minute- let’s first build up a high yield savings account with $1,000 in it. At 3.75% annual interest (awarded in monthly increments, usually), that’s $37.50 of free money. Some of you may already have more than that, which is great. But our real target is more like $3000 in a high yield savings account (making over $100 a year for free- yay!). According to bankrate, which does reliable surveys, 71% of Gen Z-ers have little to no emergency savings, while about 45% of the general adult population have little to no emergency savings. We will make sure that that is not you by doing a few important things. First, you need to have a high yield savings account. For a simple one, you can start with Zynlo bank (no minimum, no fees), or Peak bank (100 dollar minimum, no fees) which both are offering over 4% annual interest. I know I recommended Stash or Robinhood for investing, and they both have savings, but you may have to pay a fee to get their best rates. Stash and Robinhood are for ultimately growing your money through investing. By the way, you can usually find the best rates and a lot of info on bankrate.com. Next, you’ll start putting a small amount of money into your savings every month (or even every week or two weeks) through automation or through manual transferring. I recommend automating it, because then you don’t even have to think about it. Let your money genie think about it and you can think about something else. You can also use acorns, as Gillian mentioned, which will put a small amount from each card transaction into your account without you thinking about it. It’s easy to do, but I find that system a bit hard to understand and to be unpredictable vs. just “$20 from my checking account into my high yield savings account every two weeks, please, Genie (or whatever you named your Genie)”.